Field Photo Standards for Adjusters and Inspectors

Start with a written shot list, not a photo count

A quota of photos produces padding. A shot list produces a file someone else can reconstruct months later without being there. The list should move from the outside in and from wide to close, so that every detail photo has a parent image establishing where it sits. Anyone reviewing the file should be able to point at a close-up of a cracked joist and trace it back through a room shot and a house shot without asking a question.

Write the list per peril rather than as one universal template. A water loss needs source, path and affected materials. A hail claim needs elevation-by-elevation coverage and test squares. A vehicle loss needs all four corners plus VIN plate and odometer. A commercial fire needs the same discipline applied to areas the occupier will describe in unfamiliar terms, so label them the way the insured does.

Keep the list short enough to actually complete. A twelve-item core that gets done on every file beats a forty-item ideal that gets abandoned when the light goes.

• Full property from the street, showing address markers or house number
• All four elevations, each identifiable as that property
• Risk-level context: roof, grade, drainage, neighbouring structures
• Room overview from a corner before anything close-up in that room
• Damage mid-range showing the affected area in its surroundings
• Damage close-up with a scale reference in frame
• Source or point of origin, and the path the damage travelled
• Serial and model plates for any appliance or equipment involved
• Pre-existing conditions and prior repairs, photographed even when unhelpful
• Mitigation already performed, and any materials removed before you arrived

Context photos are what stop a misattribution argument

The single most damaging gap in a claim file is a close-up that could have been taken anywhere. A photo of stained drywall with nothing else in frame proves nothing about which property it came from. The fix is cheap: never take a detail shot without having already taken the wider shot that contains it, from roughly the same position, in the same sequence.

On multi-unit and multi-building sites, this matters even more. Photograph unit numbers, door plates, meter tags and building signage as you move, so the file itself carries the address rather than relying on your memory or a separate note. If a site has three identical outbuildings, shoot something that distinguishes them before you shoot the damage inside one.

The same logic applies to time. If you visit twice, make the second visit visually distinguishable from the first by shooting a fresh establishing sequence. A file where day one and day two photos are interleaved with no visual separation is a file where someone will eventually claim the damage grew between them.

Scale, measurement and the things a photo cannot show

A photograph flattens depth and gives no absolute size. Put something known in frame: a tape measure held open across the damage, a folding ruler, a coin for small pitting, a standard-size marker for hail. Photograph the measuring tool both in place and readable, which usually means two frames rather than one clever one, because the shot that shows the whole crack rarely shows the numbers on the tape.

Some things simply do not photograph. Moisture behind a wall, a smell, a soft floor underfoot, an intermittent noise. Record those in the written report and use the photo to show where you took the reading, including the meter display when the equipment has one. A photo of a moisture meter reading at a marked spot on a wall is far stronger than a number typed into a form with no image behind it.

For roof and elevation work, consistency beats artistry. Shoot each slope from the same relative position every time, and mark test squares clearly enough that a reviewer can count what you counted.

Naming and organising so the file is retrievable in three years

Camera-default filenames are the reason claim photos get lost. Adopt one naming pattern and apply it to everything: claim number, then date, then a sequence number, then a short location or subject token. It does not need to be elegant. It needs to sort correctly and survive being emailed, zipped and re-uploaded by three different people.

Rename in the field or immediately after, not weeks later when the memory of which room was which has gone. Many teams handle this by shooting a written slate at the start of each area, a whiteboard or notepad with the claim number and room name, which gives you an in-image anchor even if the filenames are later mangled.

Decide as a team where the master copies live and treat that location as the record. Photos that only exist on an individual adjuster's phone are a business continuity problem and, in a dispute, a chain of custody problem.

• CLM123456_2026-03-14_012_kitchen-ceiling.jpg
• One folder per claim, subfolders per visit date rather than per subject
• Keep originals untouched in their own folder; do any working copies elsewhere
• Never renumber or delete from the original set to tidy it up

Working in crawl spaces, attics and after dark

Bad light is the normal condition of this job. A phone camera in a crawl space will either brighten the whole frame into grey mush or expose for the flashlight and lose everything else. Two things help more than any setting: get closer, and give the camera a second light source that is not attached to it. A head torch aimed across the surface plus a hand light aimed at the subject reveals texture that a direct on-camera flash flattens completely.

Raking light across a surface is how you make a dent, a ripple or a lifted shingle visible at all. Hold the light almost parallel to the surface rather than pointing straight at it. For dark exteriors, brace the camera against something solid rather than relying on your hands, and take several frames of the same view since one will be sharper than the others.

Do not photograph what you cannot reach safely. A roof in the wet, an unstable floor, a space with suspected asbestos or an energised panel are places for equipment or a specialist, not for a better photo. Note the limitation in the report and say why the shot is absent.

These are evidentiary images, so editing rules are absolute

A claim photograph is a record of a condition at a moment. Anything that changes what the image depicts is off limits: no removing objects, no cloning, no sharpening a serial number into legibility, no replacing a sky, no generative fill, no compositing two frames. This holds regardless of intent. An edit made to help a reviewer see the damage more clearly can still destroy the image's value as evidence and, depending on circumstances and jurisdiction, raise serious legal exposure. Where you are unsure, escalate rather than edit, and take direction from your own legal and compliance function.

The narrow exception most teams allow is global exposure or brightness correction for legibility, applied to a copy while the original file stays untouched, and documented in the file: what was changed, by whom, when, and why. Rotation to correct orientation is usually treated the same way. Anything beyond that should be an explicit written policy decision rather than an individual adjuster's judgement call in the moment.

This is worth separating clearly from marketing work. An AI photo editor like Flora is a reasonable tool for the agency's own promotional images, tidying a cluttered background behind a team photo or fixing the lighting in an office shot. It has no place anywhere near a claim file, an inspection report or anything that might be produced in a dispute. Keeping those two workflows in different tools, on different devices where practical, is the simplest way to make sure nobody blurs the line by accident.

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